Compère’s extant output — in part of dispited attribution — consists of about three complete parody Masses (Missa Alles regretz; Missa De tous bien plaine; Missa L’homme armé) and four Mass sections, three motet cycles, twenty-three motets and Magnificats, five motet-chansons, forty-nine chansons and two frottolas (“Che fa la ramacina” and “Scaramella fa la galla”, a popular melody which he repeats as the tenor consecutively in binary and ternary measure and then without the rests inserted in the previous part, while the other voices imitate, even with initial diminutions — an original experiment).

His most famous work is the Motet “Omnium bonorum plena”, also known as the “prayer for the singers”, which implores the favor of Our Lady for several Flemish Polyphonists: Guillaume Dufay from the first generation, Antoine Busnois, Johannes Ockeghem and Johannes Regis of the second, Josquin of his own, the third, with a classical allusion to the mystical and carnal love in Solomons Song of Songs, quoting the melody of Hayne van Ghizeghem’s popular Chanson “De tous bien plaie”, which is — at least these first words — the French translation of Compère’s Latin work. The Missa Allez regrets, based on Hayne van Ghizeghem’s chanson, is a notable forerunner of the sixteenth century parody Mass (where the title indicates the work, often a Motet or even a secular song, it musically pays hommage to, which was not regarded as plagiarism in fedual days). The motet cycles are in fact “Motetti Missales”, i.e. designed to be substituted for the correct liturgical items (both Ordinary and Proper) of Masses for certain feasts — hence the label “substitution Mass” sometimes given them; this custom was unique to the Ambrosian use of Milan. Compère’s motet-chansons have a tenor with Latin text glossed by the French words of the upper voices, as in the exquisite “Royne du ciel”/“Regina caeli”. His secular works document the change from sentimental Burgundian chansons in the fixed poetic forms towards the witty chansons of later French composers, as he uses elements of both, writing both Burgundian “formes fixes” a 3 and more popular, lighter works in 4 parts (notably chansons rustiques for Francis I), avoiding the frantic melismatics of say Agricola; several were printed in Petrucci’s Harmonici musices Odhecaton (Venice, 1501, mainly devoted to secular works in 3 or 4 parts by the third generation of Flemish polyphony).